Larry Hammer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
larryhammer) wrote2011-03-26 08:32 am
larryhammer) wrote2011-03-26 08:32 am
"Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love/Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest"
Things I read the first few days after I bought an e-reader*:
Cain: A Mystery, Byron - In brief: already rankled by having to till the earth outside the gates of a Paradise he's never seen, Cain is ripe for manipulation by Lucifer's "evidence" of the Creator's inhumane nature, and when Abel gets priggish on him the result is a lost temper and a dead younger brother. Despite its scandalous reputation, I see why this one isn't as well-known as some of his other closet dramas -- because honestly Byron's all but phoning it in with this one. A completely linear plot and hardly any histrionics make it less interesting than Manfred, which I actively don't like but, significantly, has more in the way of good poetry. Skippable unless you're being a completist.
Heaven and Earth, Byron - "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they [were] fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose" -- one such chosen being Anah, beloved of Japhet, son of Noah. This is also not a good closet drama, in part because the story is unfinished (Byron left off at a point where the only direction it could go is crash-and-burn, which is not very dramatic). However, unlike Cain it's actually interesting -- Byron stuffed several bits of Biblical mythology into his id vortex and set it to Puree. Rewritten as an American high school AU, you'd have an excellent standard YA urban fantasy -- or age it up, the plot skeleton for an erotic novel (assuming erotica is up for Byronism direct from the tap instead of diluted through cultural transmission (teens who dig Huthering Heights already are)).
Daddy-Long-Legs, Jean Webster - Orphanage girl goes to college thanks to a mysterious benefactor with the condition that she write him regular letters -- this text. I'd long avoided this based on the premise and time period as likely to be somewhere between squicky and sentimental. There's some squick, but it's very light and mitigated byJerusha Judy's maturing independence. It also helps that in the end she's a 23-year-old college graduate marrying her erstwhile anonymous sponsor, as if you couldn't guess that, a man in his early (?) thirties. Which anyway isn't the reader's payoff -- that, instead, is Judy Jerusha's impudent letters with voice perfectly tuned to her maturation. My only, minor complaint is that while, for Jerusha Judy's sophomore year, Webster gives us the smug sophos side but not the messing-up moros side. (I'm sure I'm declining that wrong.) Highly recommended as an alternative to Dean's Tam Lin.
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery - Spinster brother and sister accidentally adopt an energetic orphan girl (they'd wanted a boy to help on the farm) and hijinx ensue. It's hard to avoid knowing the outlines of this story when one is somewhat steeped in Japanese popular culture,** but not the sort of story where spoilers matter, being an extended series of comic and heartwarming incidents -- for as TV Tropes notes, Montgomery has a lively sense of humor making this a delight. One odd thing I noticed: aside from Anne-with-an-E herself, the adults have more fully realized characterizations than the children -- even BFF Diana is much of a cipher, with only Gilbert Blythe (despite Anne's refusal to pay him any attention) having any color at all. There's no point in recommending this, because if you're going to read it, odds are you already have. As for me, on to Anne of Avonlea.
Endymion, John Keats (reread) - It's young Keats, which means it was written before he'd learned to harness the pretty language in ways that produced fruitful tensions. Not to mention long and languidly paced. But it's very pretty.
Poems of To-Day - A pedagogical anthology, intended for schools, of contemporary verse from 1915. If you can overlook the not very muted English jingoism (mostly expressed as a sort of smug localism, though there's also the likes of Brooke's "The Soldier") this is in fact a collection of Edwardian and Georgian poetry at its best, along with healthy dollops of late Victorians in sympathy with contemporary aesthetics. The formal craft is almost universally superb, and while the tonal palette is a bit limited and the sentiments are often uncomplicated (in part, I suspect, because of the intended audience), sometimes there's ironies running underneath that you might miss if you doze. And then there's discoveries like the astonishing "Shadows and Lights." Recommended to the interested. (Which ought to be a larger set than it is: the Edwardian/Georgian poets do not, in the Story Of Modernism, get much credit for their innovations in purging their language of Victorian poeticisms and in adapting their meters to conversational rhythms. They were not Victorians warmed over but the first stage of Moderns.)
Now reading: complete Robert Herrick and an early Wodehouse. Which two alternate surprisingly well.
Anyone have recs for what next?
* A Sony PRS300 Pocket Reader, which I'd already been eyeing when it went on deep discount for being replaced by a touchscreen model. The smaller size means I have to be picky about text formatting (too much indenting or non-proportional typefaces mean too much line-wrapping for poetry) but it really does fit in a pocket, being the size of a thin, if inflexible, American mass-market paperback.
** And, in fact, I've read one of the manga adaptations.
---L.
Cain: A Mystery, Byron - In brief: already rankled by having to till the earth outside the gates of a Paradise he's never seen, Cain is ripe for manipulation by Lucifer's "evidence" of the Creator's inhumane nature, and when Abel gets priggish on him the result is a lost temper and a dead younger brother. Despite its scandalous reputation, I see why this one isn't as well-known as some of his other closet dramas -- because honestly Byron's all but phoning it in with this one. A completely linear plot and hardly any histrionics make it less interesting than Manfred, which I actively don't like but, significantly, has more in the way of good poetry. Skippable unless you're being a completist.
Heaven and Earth, Byron - "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they [were] fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose" -- one such chosen being Anah, beloved of Japhet, son of Noah. This is also not a good closet drama, in part because the story is unfinished (Byron left off at a point where the only direction it could go is crash-and-burn, which is not very dramatic). However, unlike Cain it's actually interesting -- Byron stuffed several bits of Biblical mythology into his id vortex and set it to Puree. Rewritten as an American high school AU, you'd have an excellent standard YA urban fantasy -- or age it up, the plot skeleton for an erotic novel (assuming erotica is up for Byronism direct from the tap instead of diluted through cultural transmission (teens who dig Huthering Heights already are)).
Daddy-Long-Legs, Jean Webster - Orphanage girl goes to college thanks to a mysterious benefactor with the condition that she write him regular letters -- this text. I'd long avoided this based on the premise and time period as likely to be somewhere between squicky and sentimental. There's some squick, but it's very light and mitigated by
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery - Spinster brother and sister accidentally adopt an energetic orphan girl (they'd wanted a boy to help on the farm) and hijinx ensue. It's hard to avoid knowing the outlines of this story when one is somewhat steeped in Japanese popular culture,** but not the sort of story where spoilers matter, being an extended series of comic and heartwarming incidents -- for as TV Tropes notes, Montgomery has a lively sense of humor making this a delight. One odd thing I noticed: aside from Anne-with-an-E herself, the adults have more fully realized characterizations than the children -- even BFF Diana is much of a cipher, with only Gilbert Blythe (despite Anne's refusal to pay him any attention) having any color at all. There's no point in recommending this, because if you're going to read it, odds are you already have. As for me, on to Anne of Avonlea.
Endymion, John Keats (reread) - It's young Keats, which means it was written before he'd learned to harness the pretty language in ways that produced fruitful tensions. Not to mention long and languidly paced. But it's very pretty.
Poems of To-Day - A pedagogical anthology, intended for schools, of contemporary verse from 1915. If you can overlook the not very muted English jingoism (mostly expressed as a sort of smug localism, though there's also the likes of Brooke's "The Soldier") this is in fact a collection of Edwardian and Georgian poetry at its best, along with healthy dollops of late Victorians in sympathy with contemporary aesthetics. The formal craft is almost universally superb, and while the tonal palette is a bit limited and the sentiments are often uncomplicated (in part, I suspect, because of the intended audience), sometimes there's ironies running underneath that you might miss if you doze. And then there's discoveries like the astonishing "Shadows and Lights." Recommended to the interested. (Which ought to be a larger set than it is: the Edwardian/Georgian poets do not, in the Story Of Modernism, get much credit for their innovations in purging their language of Victorian poeticisms and in adapting their meters to conversational rhythms. They were not Victorians warmed over but the first stage of Moderns.)
Now reading: complete Robert Herrick and an early Wodehouse. Which two alternate surprisingly well.
Anyone have recs for what next?
* A Sony PRS300 Pocket Reader, which I'd already been eyeing when it went on deep discount for being replaced by a touchscreen model. The smaller size means I have to be picky about text formatting (too much indenting or non-proportional typefaces mean too much line-wrapping for poetry) but it really does fit in a pocket, being the size of a thin, if inflexible, American mass-market paperback.
** And, in fact, I've read one of the manga adaptations.
---L.
no subject
Wodehouse does froth very well indeed.
---L.